Consumer Confidence At 6 Year High, Do You Feel Confident?

Feeling good? Consumer confidence took a huge jump this month, hitting a 6 year high! Woohoo! Let’s buy tacos and jetskis and footballs!

What’s the cause for the jump? “An improvement in business conditions and the job market has lifted consumers’ spirits in July,” said Lynn Franco, director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center, in a press release.

Do you feel more confident that you did last month? We feel the about the same.

Meg, I now have an image of you perched atop a jetski, holding a taco in one hand and a football in the other, flying across the water like a banshee screaming, “Consuuuuuumerrrrrr confideeeeeence!”. In fact, I think this should be The Consumerist’s official icon representing consumer confidence. Or maybe I just want to see you in a bikini. :P

Confident? Hell no! Prices at my grocery store just went up AGAIN last week, and given the news that oil just hit a record price today and milk prices are expected to rise, it doesn’t look like they will be going down in the near future.

Most of my spending money is currently being used to stock on food. Might as well stock up before the prices inevitably rise again.

The only consumers who would be confident right now and spend more are the same ones who would still be slow as our country slides into depression. Our dollar is devalued so badly that I don’t know that it can ever recover.

Confident in everything but the housing market. Oh, and except the whole state of Michigan.

Honestly, the country is doing well(1). If we sit back and take a look at how we live from day to day (and not be jealous), we’re doing okay. Well, except here in Michigan (people with jobs still do okay, but don’t try to sell a house).

Yea, Michigan is doing pretty badly. It’s like the movers and shakers of job creation think it’s 1950. Michigan will never be the world leader in manufacturing again when you have to pay people $27 an hour to screw in lug nuts.

Like when Electrolux left the state a year or so ago? Some people on the production line with nothing but a high school education were making $30 an hour!

At the same time, I’m a graphic designer with two college degrees, and it’s hard to break the 20 mark.

Is it really confidence or is it the collected broken spirit of millions of American consumers giving in to big business? Are we confident or just breaking down and giving in and buying our tickets on the Chinese Poison Train one by one?

So, your saying that $30 is fair compensation for somebody with only a high school education for a job that requires no skills, when my wife is a dental hygienist, a state regulated health profession, and doesn’t make that much.

@G-Dog: No, the $30/hr lug-nutter likely was the result of a coercive market distortion (e.g., a union). Whereas your wife is probably at (or much closer) to her fair compensation (what a willing employer will pay and a willing employee will accept). Her work may be hard, it may be demanding, it may be gross, it may require training and licensure — but as long as there is a queue of others behind her willing and able to do the work too it’s hard to make the case she’s underpaid.